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20th April 2023
10:45am BST
Lawmakers in Florida have approved legislation that will see child sex offenders given the death penalty.
The proposal - that passed Tuesday - will allow juries to sentence offenders to death by votes of at least 8-4. Previously, the sentence required unanimity.
The bill will apply to those convicted of abusing a child under the age of 12.
Governor Ron DeSantis told Good Morning Orlando: "My view is, you have some of these people that will be serial rapists of six, seven-year-old kids.
"I think the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment when you have situations like that."
State senate minority leader Lauren Book and state senator Jonathan Martin, the bill’s co-sponsors, argued that those who sexually harm children are likely to repeat their crime and deserve the ultimate penalty, the New York Post reported.
"Once a predator has a child ensnared, they will harm that child over and over and over again. And then move on to another innocent child," Book said.
She argued that the death penalty guards against the targeting of additional victims.
“Pedophile behaviour has been deemed highly repetitive to the point of compulsion,” she said, the Post reported,
State senator Rosalind Osgood, one of the five who opposed the bill, said she agreed that sexual attacks on children are severe crimes, but was against the punishment in general due to her religious beliefs.
The bill runs up against Supreme Court precedent.
In 2008, the high court ruled that the sentence could not be levied against child rapists or anyone who committed a crime in which the victim did not die.
However, DeSantis suggested this week that the current Supreme Court might be open to overturning that decision.
The death penalty controversy made headlines in Florida last year after a jury spared Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz from execution, instead handing down a life sentence.
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